-in order to gain a better understanding of not only the second half of wuthering heights, but also the novel as a whole, i chose to look at james phillips' essay on the 2 types of love he claims exist within bronte's story throughout between catherine and heathcliff. his essay, published quite recently (july 2007), combines ideas of kant and freud in an effort to define the love that exists in the story — mainly between catherine and heathcliff vs. catherine and linton.
-while it starts off promising, it quickly begins to reach for an abstract analysis surely unintended by ms. bronte when she penned her novel over 100 years ago. the fact that she died soon after finishing wuthering heights invites all sorts of intriguing literary analysis since she did not have much time to comment on her own work and her own authorial intent / views on and experience w/ romantic love. in my view, phillips is nothing more than a participant in the idolatry of author worship (or intense analysis centuries after the fact). whether phillips is right or wrong isn't important, what occurs is that bronte's name is immortalized thru his essay, which is rather annoying.
-phillips starts off by immediately creating a binary in which he forms his essay around. "heathcliff is the transcendental face of love, linton is its empirical face" (96). this is where he makes his first leap, and also his first mistake. by limiting himself to kantian philosophy, there are only 2 classifications of love for him to label for heathcliff and linton respectively. i am of the opinion that it is quite human nature to desire to classify things between 2 labels, one or the other.
-in phillips' defense, disregarding this supposed binary, immanual kant did lived and died before bronte was born (born 1724, died 1804 — bronte was not born until 1818). thus, it is in the realm of possibility that she was in fact influenced by his ideas, but to what extent it is hard to say for certain. phillips is purely speculating from the very beginning, a lofty goal and a fascinating concept, but a shot in the dark nonetheless.
-what he means w/ his labels is that catherine's love for heathcliff transcends normal ideas of love, it transcends other relationships she has, it transcends her death (she still communicates w/ him as a ghost), etc. concerning linton, her love is empirically based, or grounded in what he literally brings to the table for her. it's impermanent, which, traditionally, all love is considered to be. this makes phillips question whether or not catherine and heathcliff's relationship was really love after all, which is far more interesting than borrowing kantian and freudian terms (which he does later by offering up a hypothesis that when heathcliff moved in w/ her family at a young age she didn't really see him as a brother but as a father in a strange sort of electra complex).
-looking further into whether or not their relationship was love in its truest sense, phillips examines the "trust" they have for one another. "trust, too, looks beyond empirical data" (98). but, catherine never has a vulnerable moment of faith (trust by definition is uncertain). instead, "in catherine's eyes, there is no possibility of abandoning heathcliff, b/c the foundation of their bond in insensible to empirical reversals" (98). thus, she doesn't feel bad as one normally would when she marries linton. for her this is a whole different type of love entirely.
-for catherine and heathcliff, "the distinction b/t love and the object of love is erased" (98). therefore, catherine's only idea of "true love" can only be represented (and also personified) via heathcliff, her one true love throughout her life and death. this is how phillips defends catherine's cruelty aspects towards heathcliff in regards to her marriage w/ linton. she is so confident in her relationship w/ heathcliff that she feels nothing can break their bond. for her, heaven is hellish w/o heathcliff in it. theirs is an obsessive relationship, but its intensity can be complimented and observed.
-heathcliff on the other hand has to have catherine die before realizing the old cliche: "you don't know what you got til it's gone." basically, as phillips says, "love is not abstract" (102). both heathcliff and catherine embody each other's idea of what love is, and they cannot separate each other from their idea of what love is. it is an absolute, cruel, timeless love. ** so intense **
-finally, phillips questionably includes near the end of his essay a line that sabotages his own arguments. quoting an essay on the novel as a whole, he recalls that its author, leavis, "discusses the dangers of the reductive reading whose focus os the relationship b/t catherine earnshaw and heathcliff" (104). leavis, assumedly a feminist, instead labels the 2nd half of the book and a look at an "alternative understanding of love and of woman" (104). this analysis is much more conceivable, and likely, to me. on top of that, phillips does nothing after this to defend his essay, which to me is just what leavis warns against doing. perhaps phillips doesn't consider his to be so since it offhandedly also considers the question of catherine and linton's relationship. however, it's obvious that his main concern here is w/ the novel's 2 principal lovers, namely, catherine and heathcliff.
-this essay did not necessarily help my understanding of the 2nd half of the novel, but it did open up my mind to a whole new set of ideas and ways of looking at wuthering heights in general and esp. w/ regard to catherine and heathcliff. so, while i'm not buying everything phillips is selling, he does have some interesting ideas and poses some good questions.
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